Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaj
Plot: Palaeontologist Kate Lloyd joins an expedition to Antarctica to excavate an apparently long dead alien life-form frozen in the ice. Despite Kate’s concerns, her Norwegian colleagues insist on extracting tissue from the ‘fossil’ – big, big mistake…
TM Rating: A horror fest of a movie is an appropriate choice for Halloween week and The Thing certainly sets its cinematic sights on scaring its audience…but is it any good?
Those of us of a certain age will remember with chilly fondness John Carpenter’s original classic of its time. The Thing (1982) had ridiculous moments for sure (the head on spider crab legs for one) but it tapped into the fear that comes from being trapped in an icy hell hole with nowhere to go when something in the darkness comes a calling. It was gruesome, horrific, tense and scary as hell. And it left us wondering.
The Thing (2011) isn’t a remake, it’s a prequel and there-in lies the problem. If you’ve seen the original, it has nothing new to say. It simply fills in the gaps of a story audiences already know the outcome to…well up to a point anyway.
The Thing (2011) isn’t a bad example of its genre (despite some clumsy, wooden dialogue), there’s just nothing original about it. Even using Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the protagonist evokes thoughts of a watered down version of Alien’s Ripley.
It’s not a spoiler to reveal that ‘The Thing‘, when it’s woken from its long slumber, turns out to be able to mimic those it gruesomely dispatches, human or animal. In the original movie this plot device ramped up the tension by having characters turn against each as it became increasingly impossible to tell who was human and who wasn’t. It’s a trick that also works in the prequel as fear and paranoia causes almost as much mayhem amongst the members of the disasterous expedition as the rampaging ‘thing’ wreaking death and destruction in their midst.
Although classed as a prequel, The Thing 2011 is almost an exact remake of The Thing 1982, albeit one that completely lacks John Carpenter’s deft touch and original vision.
6/10 ““ If you’re a fan of sc-fi, horror and gore and haven’t seen the original The Thing, you’ll probably find this prequel an enjoyable and moderately thrilling ride. If you have seen the original – give it a miss and dig out John Carpenter’s much, much superior film. I wonder whatever did happen to Kurt Russel’s character?
Screening Times: 5.30pm daily
Tickets: €6.50 Buy Your Tickets Here
